O: When you started talking about the reunion, what were those initial conversations like? Did you have to deal with apologizing and asking for apologies before you could talk about playing music again?
JM: No, not really. We never were much for talking. [Laughs.] It was just kind of like people growing up. We were all so young, you know.
LB: Our sense of humor in that band was harsh. And nobody was particularly safe from that, except maybe some girls. [Laughs]. When we were functioning as a band, we would be watching Faces Of Death videos and practicing and listening to Venom and then having conversations, which were just these great dissections of other people's personalities. So it would be really hard to seriously go to J: "That thing you said about me really hurt my feelings, and I've never been able to shake it." Anything that he said about me, I've said worse about him. You just get a really thick skin. My skin was pretty thin when I was in that band, but because of what I went through with that band, and just the level of humor and sarcasm that we were dealing on was so intense—I think it's also something that's almost regionally specific, like it's almost a Massachusetts thing. I moved there from the Midwest when I was like 12, and I thought people were fucking assholes when I got to Massachusetts. And when I moved out to California, all of a sudden everybody in California is trying to hug you and stuff and talk about, "Hey, that was really great, and thank you so much." And you're like, "Wait a minute, what the fuck is this?" Maybe it's attributable to everybody kind of having a sense of humor about themselves, which is probably the nicest surprise about J that I think I've experienced. Finding out about him is like, "Wow, he has a sense of humor about himself." 'Cause in my estimation, back then, he didn't. He could insult you for how you chewed while—literally—saliva is dribbling out of the side of his mouth while he's chewing on a piece of gum like a fucking cow. [Laughs.] And he's telling you that he hates the way that you eat chicken. So now to see that maybe he sort of understands that he himself has his own quirks, that's pretty healing. Now, things are just great—it's like family around. J's wife is really nice, and I went to see J's guru a couple weeks ago. [Laughs.] He was out in Los Angeles seeing this woman Amma—they call her "the hugging guru," 'cause lines of people form and you go and you hug her. And J's been following her for probably 10 years.
O: In 1993, Sebadoh shared some Southwestern Lollapalooza dates with Dinosaur Jr. Did you come into contact with each other that summer?
M: Not at all. I didn't even go watch him. [Laughs.] It was weird. I always liked Lou, and I was really into Lou—I just wasn't back then. Now I'm really into his stuff, but back then, it had only been three or four years [since Barlow's expulsion]—it was still just too fresh, so I couldn't really listen to his music, 'cause it was just too painful if I were to hear it. I remember one time, we were like, "Yeah, Lou's playing on the side stage." J was like, "Are you gonna check it out?" And I was just like, "Mmm, probably not." [Laughs.] I was kind of afraid to deal with him, because he was so angry every time I'd come across him. It was always some kind of confrontation, or "You suck!" and I just, like, couldn't deal with it. So I avoided him. [Laughs.]
LB: The main stage was probably, at any given show, a half-hour walk in the midday sun, and being on the second stage, we didn't really have the little carts or anything to zip around on, so I never made it to the main stage. And it was pretty obvious that Dinosaur were not into playing that at all. J never said anything—I could usually hear the sort of windblown Dinosaur from where we were—but the very last show that we played in Los Angeles, J said the first thing that he had said—and actually, I have this on videotape, because I was videotaping some ducks floating across the pond, and you can hear J going, "This is the last show of Lollapalooza—we're so fucking psyched!" [Laughs.]
O: That must have provided you some enjoyment.
LB: It did, because I just knew they were miserable. I knew that removing me would only create a very brief moment of relief for them, that they would immediately fall back into some kind of crazy rut. So that was satisfying. [Laughs.] But that was a long time ago... One thing I do remember that was kind of interesting was that I had all these amp problems on that tour, because we were playing—literally—in the middle of dusty parking lots and stuff, and I had this really sensitive amplifier that was breaking down. And at some point, J offered—I don't remember how it happened, maybe he was backstage or something—to let me use some of his stuff. But I refused. I was like, "No, that's okay." But I remember just going, "Man." [Laughs.] "Well, that's interesting." J started showing up at Sebadoh shows in the '90s—I think he was kind of aware of how much shit I was talking about him, but I don't think he really ever pursued any of it. One of the things that really triggered this, for me to finally just go, "Hey, you know, maybe this could work," is when I realized that maybe J wasn't really holding any kind of grudge against me because he didn't like me. I was thinking, maybe he just didn't realize what he had done, or maybe he wasn't really aware of how much he'd actually hurt me. And when I started to realize that, he kind of became more human to me.
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